Online collaborative sharing of documents is typically provided by a network-based file sharing computer system that allows multiple users to access and edit the files. Generally, documents are created and edited by a specific type of native application, such as a word processor or spreadsheet application. Many such applications provide support for co-editing a single document among many users. In these applications, to limit editing within a shared document, users can restrict permissions for the shared document, and other users can launch a ‘read-only’ version of the document that can subsequently be saved and edited by the other users. Many such applications also provide support for tracking comments or other forms of annotation made to portions of a file, metadata associated with the file, or differences between the two saved files. However, existing systems do not provide functionality that enables users to bypass the step of manually saving a copy of a read-only file before editing is allowed. Additionally, these systems do not allow for the limiting of each users' edits to the file to the user that made the edits (e.g., such that each user's edits are not visible to any other user).